Tyria Today – Guild Wars 2 Starter Guide

To get you started on your journey into the vastness of Tyria, we’ve compiled this collection of tips, tricks and helpful suggestions. Some of it you may already know, if you’ve spent time in Guild Wars 2. Others might surprise you, and there are a few simple things you can do when starting which will save you time and money.

Homeward Bound (On The Cheap)

You can teleport to any Waypoint (teleporter) you’ve discovered. Teleporting inside a city is free, but outside the city it costs Coin depending on your level and how far you want to go. To get to a home city for free, follow these steps: On your Hero Panel (H) go to the bottom most tab (Player vs Player), and click “Enter the Mists”.

Now you’re in the PvP hub area (or if it’s your first time using it, a quick tutorial area). Walk through the purple gate in front of you, which takes you to the hub city Lion’s Arch. Open your map and to the north-east of your current position, find the Gate Hub Plaza teleport icon.

Clicking that will put you in right in the middle of a circle of gates, each one leading to one of the main cities. You can tell which gate leads where, by the race of guards standing in front of them.

Attributes (What Do They Mean?)

Each profession has 10 attributes, or “stats”. Nine of them are shared across all professions, but one is unique to your profession.

Primary Attributes: These increase automatically each time you gain a level. Power is added to your weapon damage and Precision increases your critical hit chance. Toughness is added to your armour value and Vitality increases your max hitpoints by 10 per point.

Secondary Attributes: Can only be adjusted via equipment or by putting points into your trait lines. Condition Damage is the additional damage done by things like burning, poison, confusion and bleeding., Condition Duration determines how long the conditions you inflict last, and Critical Damage is a damage multiplier for critical strikes. Boon Duration determines how long positive buffs cast on you last and Healing Power strengthens healing, including self-healing.

The final attribute varies depending on your profession, and usually ties into that profession’s main system. For example, the Necromancer has a “Life Force Pool”, which increases the amount of life (gained by killing enemies) you can store up to use for your spells. The profession-specific attribute can only be increased via your traits.

Minimap Master

If you shift+leftclick in your minimap it will create a red “ping” which people in your party can see. If you shift+drag the left mouse button you can make temporary scribbles. Alt+leftclick will place a personal marker.

Control+leftclicking on a Waypoint or a Point of Interest will instantly create a link to that point in whatever chat window you have focused. If someone clicks the link, their map will open and zoom to that location. You can shift+leftclick instead if you want to add the link to a sentence you’re currently typing.

Inventory and Bank Master

You can alt+leftclick and drag a pile of items to split the stack. This doesn’t work on harvesting items like pickaxes, because those aren’t actually stacks: the number indicates durability.

If you click the cog wheel in the top right of the window, and select “Deposit All Collectibles”, it will send (at no charge) all crafting materials you’ve gathered to the Collections tab (your Bank). This includes minipets, unless you place them inside something like an Invisible Bag.

When you visit a Vendor and go to the Sell panel, there is a “Sell Junk” button. This will sell all useless grey “trophy” items in your inventory, which are items only useful for selling.

When viewing your Bank, there is a small padlock in the bottom right. Clicking that, will purchase a bank expansion at the cost of 600 Gems. On the left side of your Bank panel is a link to the Collections tab, which holds up to 255 of each of the crafting materials. The Bank and Collections are account-wide, so you can access them from any character.

Transmutation Stones

When you fully explore a city, the reward is often a handful of Transmutation Stones. These magical rocks are more useful than you might think: they allow you to take two of the same items, and mix-and-match the three components into a new item. You choose between the look, base attributes, and bonus modifiers of the two items, and the result is combined into a customized piece armour or weapon. This is especially useful for items you can’t sell or salvage, or if you want ensure you keep a rune/sigil without running the risk it may get destroyed during a salvage.

Emotes

You can do fun things like “/dance” or “/bow” or “/cheer” by typing the command into the chat window. Certain commands can be giving an “@” at the end, to indicate a target. If you have an enemy selected and type “/threaten @”, it will threaten the enemy (or player) by name. You can use an asterisk “*” to sync actions with friends: if everyone types “/dance *” within 5 seconds of each other, it will cause all the characters to dance in sync.

Beginner Tips and Tricks

Salvage white weapons and armour for the materials, sell blue and green items (or combine them at the Mystic Forge for a chance at a rare item). Use the cheap salvage kits. Harvest everything you see, you get lots of experience points for it. Don’t just chase the green objective marker, explore. You’ll get more experience that way.

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